Understanding opportunities and threats

“A major reason why western publishers are losing market share is not the issue of competition, but a lack of actionable knowledge about their customers.”

STRATEGIC ISSUES

Consumers and communicators have an ever-increasing range of media alternatives, and also an accelerating determination to avoid loyalty and seek plurality.

In terms of audience, publishers and broadcasters are not so much losing audience as losing audience frequency and depth. People are consuming less often and for less time. Their lack of depth of interest and loyalty are the primary reasons why they are unwilling to pay for content on line

In addition media companies need to be crafting diversified communication solutions, particularly at a local level which is the next defined battle ground for digital plays such as Google and Yahoo.

FACTS

In terms of communicators, western newspapers have lost between 30% and 50% of their advertisers in the last ten years, and few have the measures in place to track either the scale of this loss or the sales processes to retain these drifting advertisers.

SOLUTIONS

Chisholm offers a range of programmes, which have been developed over years of research and reporting of media strategies, with dozens of media companies, worldwide. These include:

1. ‣The Advertising Science programme, which enables media companies to identify the key trends within their advertising revenue mix and implement a programme that refocuses and energises their sales departments, interms of retaining and attracting advertisers, according to their particular needs and spending requirements, across single or multiple media.
   

2. ‣The Circulation Science programme, focuses on audience retention in print and digital. As well as providing a means of maximizing single copy and subscription sales, it also provides an econometric evaluation of the relationships between audience revenues and advertising revenues in both digital and cross media scenarios.
   

3. ‣The New Product Development programme introduces the science of growth and diversification to newspaper executives at a range of levels including strategic analysis, identification of new product opportunities, and management education of the need see innovation as a central cultural focus.
   

4. ‣The Digital Strategy programme, which enables publishers to define and implement the most appropriate way to move profitably and flexibly from the analogue world to the future.
   

5. ‣A range of medium and long-term forecasts for revenue and costs for both publishing groups and trade organizations. These include major long-term projections of the US and UK newspaper industries.
   

MATERIAL

The case for an industry charging and pricing model

So online pricing is now a major agenda item for the UK newspaper industry. Some believe in it. Some don’t. But before you rush to your own conclusions, international experience suggests that......

Jim Chisholm. November 2009

Conclusions on pricing in the UK National Press.

This document concludes:Newspapers are unnecessarily losing both readership and advertising revenues, from over-aggressive, un-strategic cover pricing policies. Circulations are declining faster, in part because of price increases. These are impacting on advertising revenues, perhaps destructively for some titles. Price is having less of a tactical role in terms of cross title competition.

Jim Chisholm. December 2009

Will 2010 be new year of the deal for newspapers?

It's that time in the cycle, when the accountants get their slide rules out and covet thy neighbours' assets. The newspaper industry wants to secure its future, not just for itself, but (more importantly) for society and (less importantly) for the institutional shareholders who have milked the industry for the past few years.

News and Tech

Opportunities out of Adversity

Repositioning for Future Growth - Report

A financial-model scenario for newspapers in 2017. Based on  projections of current newspaper financial data and marketplace trends, the report concluded that the newspaper franchise could be very vibrant, given meaningful strategic and operational changes.

Report for the Newspaper Association of America, 2008

Advertising science report

This report shows how small steps in the advertising sales process can lead to big rewards in terms of revenue growth and advertiser loyalty.

Report written for the World Association of Newspapers

Circulation science report

This report profiles the skills that lead to circulation success: the creative leadership of editors together with the imaginative marketing and operational capability of circulation and commercial staff. The report, which examines every aspect of distributing and marketing the newspaper to readers, applies a scientific approach to successful circulation operations.

Report written for the World Association of Newspapers

Growth and diversification report

How should newspaper companies grow? This report assesses the strategic alternatives from organic expansion of the current product through to diversification into different products and different markets through acquisition, launch or partnership. It evaluates the different alternatives and provides a range of case studies from across the world.

Report written for the World Association of Newspapers

The cost of pricing might be greater than you think

So now our industry is reverberating to the noise of content pricing. Heard it all before? We have in more ways than one. The lemmings are rushing toward a solution, regardless of the strategic analysis, or consideration of its likely outcome.

News and Tech November, 4, 2009

PROJECTS

Projects in revenue generation include:

1. ‣Price elasticity modeling to achieve both market advantage and/or value maximisation. We have undertaken work in this area on content and advertising, in both print and digital;
   

2. ‣Several projects related to redirecting advertising departments to better align with advertisers’ needs, spending patterns and categories. These involve detailed analysis of the advertiser base and revenue structures;
   

3. ‣Newspaper circulation and subscription programmes;
   

4. ‣Benchmarking - Chisholm holds a major international database comprising up to over 200 lines of data on a wide range of newspaper companies in different markets. All or parts of this database can be used to advise companies on their optimum performance in both revenues and operations.
   

5. ‣Off-take analysis enables publishers to determine their optimum advertising revenues, relative to their competitors and peers in the market. From this you can then determine how best to maximise your revenues relative to other players.
   

6. ‣Forecasting, whether at an industry or company level. Chisholm’s forecasting tools provide a reliable projection of future revenues and volumes. These are based on established forecasting principals, that enable clients to see the reliability of the forecast based on its ability to forecast the present, before applying it to the future
   

7. ‣Value modeling - in terms of positioning media products, realtive to their their content and advertising revenue potentials,  in order to develop a long term competitive strategy.
   

8. ‣Digital revenue strategies, including relating to content revenues, impact on audience versus the relative potential advertising revenues.

Jim Chisholm, Newspaper Consultant and Analyst

email: jim@jimchisholm.net. Telephone: +33 6 40 42 72 32. Mobile, +44 77 75 81 77 97. Skype: jpchisholm